1558 Les Miserables
have cut teeth, and which will form a saw. With this saw, as
long as a pin, and concealed in a sou, you will cut the bolt
of the lock, you will sever bolts, the padlock of your chain,
and the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This
masterpiece finished, this prodigy accomplished, all these
miracles of art, address, skill, and patience executed, what
will be your recompense if it becomes known that you are
the author? The dungeon. There is your future. What prec-
ipices are idleness and pleasure! Do you know that to do
nothing is a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on
the property of society! to be useless, that is to say, perni-
cious! This leads straight to the depth of wretchedness. Woe
to the man who desires to be a parasite! He will become ver-
min! Ah! So it does not please you to work? Ah! You have
but one thought, to drink well, to eat well, to sleep well. You
will drink water, you will eat black bread, you will sleep on
a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your
flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break
those fetters, you will flee. That is well. You will crawl on
your belly through the brushwood, and you will eat grass
like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured.
And then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall,
groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a hor-
rible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating
beans that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a
wood-louse in a cellar. Ah! Have pity on yourself, you mis-
erable young child, who were sucking at nurse less than
twenty years ago, and who have, no doubt, a mother still
alive! I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You desire